


Alright Left Alone

by alternatedoom



Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Arguing, F/F, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Massage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-19
Updated: 2016-05-19
Packaged: 2018-06-09 06:27:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6893770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alternatedoom/pseuds/alternatedoom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Regarding his Majesty's plan to infiltrate Admiral Taylor's garrison.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alright Left Alone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [silverr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverr/gifts).



> 1\. Just a short little thing... I was trying to write something else and this happened instead. Silverr, you wanted to see me write some ladies, and I think you have set my brain to the Wrathion-Left-and-Right channel. <3  
> 2\. Ty to GW for proofreading and great kindness.

Their camp has become more crowded than when they first arrived on Draenor, so once Left and Right have privately come to a decision, they make a point of taking his Majesty aside. The Black Prince stands motionless a few feet from his tent, watching his Blacktalons at work and play and rest: cleaning and gutting a string of fresh-caught fish, kneeling at a fire stirring the stew for dinner, putting up tents, carrying water, sparring. A blood elf and a night elf sleep side by side, the ones who will have first watch.

Yet though he's turned in their direction, Right isn't sure he's actually watching them. He's never said as much, but she suspects his Majesty misses the sustained bustle of the Veiled Stair, conducting frequent meetings with champions and potential recruits, having many conversations with travelers, never knowing who would walk through the tavern's door next. They've had their share of scrapes and excitement in Draenor, but overall the experience has been a lot slower and sleepier.

His Majesty stirs and looks at them as they approach. "A word, your Majesty?" Left says quietly.

Their employer nods wordlessly at the request, his expression unchanging, and he turns and ducks into his tent. Left glances at her and they both follow him.

His Majesty's tent is large enough to sleep four human men across, so the three of them can sit comfortably together, if in slightly close quarters. The inside of his tent smells like him, spicy and smoky. To Right, his Majesty smells like that staple of Azerothian cooking the world over, one of the first recipes every budding chef learns: spice bread. Not soft, fresh spice bread baked by a pro, but spice bread done the way novices so often prepare it, spice bread with too much spice added, toasted too close to the fire and scorched.

Rather than being disagreeable, his scent smells savory to Right, redolent of his presence. Though she hasn't been with his Majesty long, and despite not settling down in any one place, Right associates this scent with home, and she breathes it in liberally.

To anyone though wandering off the beaten path here in Draenor, it'd be a good change from the reeking odor of the mire that drifts across the plain when the wind blows east. For days sometimes all they smell is rotting plant life, the salt of the marshes, the stinking mirebeasts as big as drakes, and fungi in cycles of life and decay. They haven't gone far enough into the swamp to get up-close and personal with the hydra-like creatures seen nesting there, but Right has no doubt those smell vile too.

"What is it?" His Majesty asks, criss-crossing his legs and resting his hands mid-thigh.

Left takes a deep breath of her own and meets his Majesty's eyes. Right watches her sympathetically, glad she's not the one doing the bulk of the talking here. The Black Prince has a flourishing sense of humor, and they're both as comfortable with him as probably can be recommended, but the fact remains that his Majesty is Deathwing's son, takes himself extremely seriously, is nearly an earthbound deity and is nothing if not intimidating... and they, his loyal minions, are about to tell him nicely that his plan sucks.

Left says in her low voice, "With all due respect, your Majesty, after everything that's gone wrong... we want to be more than your bodyguards. The two of us want to advise you. Officially."

His Majesty blinks but otherwise remains smoothly composed. "Every ruler needs his advisers. I already consider you mine, and I am always willing to attend either of you or both of you."

"Well, good," Left says, sounding as surprised and disgruntled as if she were expecting a brush-off, and then they're all silent.

Right's pleased, for her part. The chances he would incinerate them like insects for arguing with him were low, but you just never know. Good followers do what they're told and don't ask questions, let alone challenge their mastermind's schemes, and though she trusts his Majesty, gods are by their nature capricious. At the Tavern, his Majesty always encouraged his champions to question his methods if and when they had doubts, but Right was ninety-eight percent sure he didn't actually mean it. When the particularly bold ones did make further inquiries, they certainly never got straight answers.

His Majesty's black eyebrows rise after a few seconds pass. "What is your counsel for me, then?"

"We don't like this plan," Left begins, and they had agreed she would stay calm, but she almost immediately starts to look and sound aggrieved. "It's too risky. Trying to ingratiate yourself with the Alliance now is pointless. The king will never forgive or forget and there is no way he'll ever pardon you. Even putting aside Garrosh's jailbreak, Wrynn's infamously protective of Prince Anduin. To the Alliance you're a wanted criminal, and nothing is going to change that now."

His Majesty doesn't blink an eye this time. "Varian Wrynn isn't in that garrison. Admiral Taylor is."

"It's still an Alliance garrison," Left counters.

The perceptible weight of his Majesty's gaze shifts to Right. "You're both in agreement on this?" 

Right nods, pursing her lips regretfully. "I mean, there's a bounty on you," she says, as neutral as possible and a tad apologetic.

There's no reproach in his Majesty's smoldering red stare, but Right drops her eyes and looks down at the dagger in her lap, a sinuously curving back-and-forth slash of steel he fashioned himself. The hilt is some kind of strong, light metal set with two red gems, one on either side. Right pulls out her sharpening stone, also a mind-made gift for her, and she starts to whet the blade. But when his Majesty glances back at her he holds out his black-and-white-gloved hand, so she flips the weapon and passes it to him hilt-first.

"At the very least," Left continues, "you shouldn't go alone. Right or Russell should accompany you."

Right glances at Left quizzically. Suggesting Russell as an alternative to her hadn't come up during their previous discussion.

His Majesty shakes his head. "Right glowers too much, and Russell wouldn't do well in captivity."

"Hey that is slander, your Majesty," Right protests, and she lowers her chin and flutters her eyelashes. "I can look right pretty."

Left rolls her eyes. "Then one of the other humans," she says firmly.

His Majesty cracks a smile, then smothers it. "Pretty and glaring murderously aren't mutually exclusive, Right. But the fact is I'll need all hands on deck to prepare and transport my gifts."

"More of us arrive by the day," Left points out. The Blacktalon network continues to trickle into Draenor, usually in pairs or triads, either by presenting themselves as freelance adventurers or posing as soldiers for the Alliance or the Horde, then going AWOL. "There are plenty of us here now to chop wood and haul stone. The Alliance king may go on about honor, but it means nothing in there if some peon soldier forgets for a split second those notices didn't include a dead-or-alive line," Left says.

His Majesty holds the hilt of Right's dagger in one hand and pinches the blade between the index finger and thumb of his other hand. He drags his gloved, pinching fingers slowly down the blade's edge, expression thoughtful as he listens to Left.

"If you value us, you should keep one of us with you," Left finishes.

" _Never_ think for one moment I don't value you," his Majesty says, looking up sharply, and there's a strange earnestness in his face now on top of his constant intensity. "You two are my best, and I'll be relying on you to guide the others. It's not only preparing the peace offerings, it's bringing them safely through hostile territory. Quite honestly I don't think it will be easy, but I have every confidence in you, and I know you'll be needed here."

"In that garrison, you'll be surrounded, and it only takes one itchy trigger finger," Left says forcefully. "I don't think you appreciate what a powder keg of a situation this might be."

"If I was captured in a firefight, yes, it would be dangerous," his Majesty answers. "But the Alliance doesn't look kindly on slaughtering those just trying to survive under unfavorable circumstances. Especially not those who come to them for succor. Even if they throw me in a dungeon, which I doubt, they're not going to try to execute me."

"You don't know that," Left insists. "And all it would take is your guard down for half a second."

The Black Prince lowers his head to look at the dagger in his hands, seemingly considering, but if Right were a betting woman, she would bet her eyeteeth he's not reconsidering his strategy, but only contemplating the choicest words to convince them to do as they're bid like the exemplary henchmen they usually are.

"My guard will not go down for even a fraction of a second. If they did try to kill me, well... I'd prevent it. I suppose I might give them cause to regret such an attempt sorely." He looks back up at them keenly, his face animated, impassioned with his entreaty. "But I promise you, I won't let it come to that."

Right shrugs when he meets her eyes, and she tosses the sharpening stone up in the air, catching it and then tucking it back in her pocket. This whole conversation makes her uncomfortable. Right wonders if the core of her odd little family will emerge from this tent the same way they came into it.

Left still looks unhappy, and his Majesty sighs at her. "Left, if I can't handle the relative wrath of a garrison full of Alliance soldiers myself, do you truly think Right or Russell is going to save me?"

"They could buy you time to escape," Left says vehemently. "Or serve as a momentary distraction. They could knock you out of the path of a spell, or take an arrow or a bullet meant for you."

"Or either one could be a momentary distraction that gets me killed," his Majesty replies.

"Again, I object," Right says dryly. 

"The bottom line is I'll look much less threatening and more sympathetic showing up alone with a sob story than marching in with a scowling bodyguard at my back. Or one sneaking in after me." His Majesty slides finger and thumb down the opposite side of the dagger, then inspects his own work before passing the weapon back to Right. The dagger is honed now to a viciously dangerous edge, as sharp as the day his Majesty made it.

"Thanks," Right says, and goes back to fiddling with it. 

His Majesty nods. "What I want you to understand is you both can do more for me out here than in there."

"I gotta say, I hate how calm you are about this," Right says, wondering at her own honesty. "If you value us, can you at least pretend to take our opinions seriously?"

Sometimes Right thinks every single expression that ever crosses her employer's face is a cultivated pretense, but all layers of expression drain away from his face as his Majesty turns as grave as she's ever seen him. Right studies him, the slightly widened eyes, the straight, humorless line of his mouth, trying to tell if this face, too, is put on. She watches him, judging. He's managing her and Left's dissent, she decides, yes, but as she requested, it's good pretending. His Majesty's best, maybe.

"I take your opinions with the utmost seriousness," his Majesty says. "I know you wouldn't have come to me like this if you didn't think it was incredibly important. And I agree it's important. I'm calm because my assessment of the situation is the correct one, and I want you to see that because I need you both on board with the plan, which is that I am going into that garrison and I am going in there alone."

"You could _die_ alone," Left retorts, throwing her hands up in frustration. "You shouldn't be away from us. Too much is at stake."

"Anything is possible, Left," His Majesty says, "but I will be on guard every second, and I won't die. You have my word." His Majesty doesn't often physically touch them, but he puts a warm hand on each of their shoulders. "You're good advisers," he says with an unusually soft smile.

Right sets her hand atop his and pats thrice, keeping a straight face.

"But now I have heard you out, and I am asking you to trust and do the will of your prince," he urges, and he squeezes lightly before withdrawing his hands.

Left sighs.

"As you say, your Majesty," Left murmurs, and she nods once before turning and ducking out of the tent.

Right quirks her eyebrows at his Majesty as she begins to follow. "That bounty was _so_ high," she muses, deliberately aloud and with a faint widening of her eyes, and his Majesty's face is otherwise still as he gives her a smooth, attractive little wink, momentarily hooding the red glow by half.

Outside, in the cool evening air, Left stands for a minute, surveying the camp, before she walks to its far edge to look out over the plain. Left stares out towards the distant hills, her body a taut, frustrated outline against the setting sun. Right goes to her and sits a little behind her and to the side.

"I hate this plan," Left says without looking at her. Left doesn't need to look over to know she's there. Left's voice is still fierce. "The risk-reward ratio is too low. And there's no reason you shouldn't accompany him."

"You heard him. I glower." Right smiles sweetly up at Left.

"You always joke about everything," Left says accusingly, and Right can't tell whether Left is annoyed with her or with his Majesty or with the situation in Draenor in general... or all of the above, that's also a possibility.

"Yeah, I do, but I am taking this seriously, or I wouldn't have gone in there with you." Right pauses. "Why'd you suggest Russell?"

"He is the second most competent human swordsman we have and he's good at concealing himself," Left says, and it's been a while since Right's seen her this defensive.

Right puts her hand to her face, unable to hide or disguise her laugh. "Yeah, okay, but takeaways his sword and boom. His Majesty's right, Russell'd go nuts as a prisoner." Right shakes her head. "Funny suggestion, to be honest, but I don't think it helped our argument."

"If Russell can't handle what needs to be done, he shouldn't be one of us," Left snaps.

Right falls silent for a moment, thinking about that. Rolling her neck from side to side, she stretches a little. "A good kit has a lot of different lockpicks in it," she answers finally.

Left grunts in irritation and changes the subject. "If he wanted to ingratiate himself with Alliance forces, the time for that was in Pandaria. It's too late, and we could go home, now. So what are we even doing here, at this point?"

"Fixing what we messed up," Right says. "Seeing the results of what we did all the way to the end. We just have to trust him, like he said."

"I hate this planet." Left's still scowling, but the fire has gone out of her low voice, and the words come out in a grumble.

Right looks up at her agitated companion. "It wouldn't be my first choice either. But everyone I care about is here, and all my stuff, so..." She shrugs. They have almost nothing in the way of 'stuff,' of course. "You made a good case, though. In another life, you coulda been an orator."

Left sighs deeply, all the fight gone from her now.

"Sit down and I'll rub your shoulders," Right offers, a friendly overture Left took months to first accept but now rarely declines. With a sigh, Left steps sideways and drops to the ground in front of her.

"He doesn't listen to us," Left says tiredly, but she tugs the tight-fitting leather straps of her vest down over her upper arms, baring her back to below her shoulder blades. Left's posture is usually impeccable, square and upright, but now she sags with defeat.

"Course not," Right agrees, and putting her hands to either side of Left's neck, she begins to massage Left's slumped green shoulders. "Not when he knows what he wants to do. But he did hear us out willingly, and he gave us his reasons straight, no bullshit. That part's good."

Left shrugs so minutely, Right wouldn't have been able to see it in the gathering darkness, but she feels the tiny shift under her hands.

Leaning forward to Left's ear, Right whispers: "Regrets?"

It's their shorthand for _are you having regrets?_ They've promised each other always to answer this question honestly, and they've sworn to secrecy about the answer. So far, the answer has always remained no.

"No." Left sighs quietly. "No regrets. Just some irritation."

"I hear that," Right agrees, and solidifies her grip. Left's muscles are tight from stress, but Right has strong hands, calloused from a lot of combat training and before that, more than her fair share of street fights. They sit in silence a moment, and Right listens to Left's occasional murmurs and grunts, and to the rustling sounds of the camp and the Arak night around them. Right hears the loud crickets, an owl, the far-off squelching of the bog, the even more distant rushing of the tide in the ocean. She casts a glance back towards the collection of tents and Blacktalons and two cooking fires, because they're less than twenty feet away from the camp, but living concentrated in a small area as they do, everyone behaves reasonably discreetly, and no one's paying them any mind.

Right decreases the pressure to work her fingers up Left's neck and mostly bald scalp, then leans forward again and gently bites Left on the shoulder. "You know, while I wish he wasn't so set on going alone, it makes sense why he is, and I do think he'll be alright."

"Let me lie down," Left says grudgingly.

Right tries not to smirk and fails utterly. When it was just her and his Majesty and Left alone in Draenor, it only took a couple of weeks to convince Left they should fuck. However, Left made it abundantly clear at the outset that this arrangement would end as soon as her preferred style of sexable anatomy became easily obtainable again. But plenty of male Blacktalons have shown up now, four orcs, seven blood elves, a tauren, five humans, a dwarf and two night elves. Left's still sleeping with her and Right's pretty sure she's yet to take a cock from any of them.

Left yanks her top all the way off, unfastens her belt, and pushes her leather pants a couple of inches down. Right watches, amused. Left lies facedown on the stiff grass, pillowing her head on her arms, and Right resumes kneading her muscles, going farther down her back this time. Left sighs in pleasure and relaxation, and as Right goes on, much of the tension slowly evaporates from her body.

Right can't say the same for herself, though her mind is on the project ahead rather than on his Majesty's safety. "We're going to have to build carts for the shipments, and we're probably going to have to kill a bunch of those gross ravagers to wheel the carts through," Right muses.

"Mmph."

"Tanlven has carpentry experience," Right says. "He's going to need to start that shit like, yesterday if we're going to keep to the schedule his Majesty wants."

"Save it for tomorrow, will you?" Left mutters.

Right stops thinking out loud and deepens the pressure of her touch. It's no way to run a relationship, Right thinks, to have a lover who's your coworker and constant companion, that you respect, that you know like the back of your hand and still want, and yet have someone more important standing between you. If Left and his Majesty were drowning in the proverbial ocean, Right would save his Majesty every time, and she knows that's what Left would want, and she knows Left would make the same choice. Maybe it's a bit like having a child, that way.

...except his Majesty is no child, but employer and master and monarch, and inside their minds, and possessed of god-like powers he uses as casually as breathing, and ferociously determined to save the world at any cost.

Right's also not sure she and Left are in a relationship in the proper sense. It's right incestuous, what they're doing. Right believed Left when she said there'd be an expiration date.

"We have a weird life," Right whispers, wrapping Left's ponytail twice around her hand and yanking Left's head back. Left likes it rough. But Right leans down, and the kiss she plants behind one green ear is lavish and wet and soft.

Left makes a growling noise that might be agreement, and she fights against Right's twisting hold on her hair to turn her head, her eyes on Right's face as Right lies down to kiss her.


End file.
